CFIT launches second industry coalition

The UK’s Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) has launched its second industry coalition, which has been formed to “fight economic crime through enhanced verification”.

The new coalition, which follows CFIT’s Open Finance Coalition, will devise solutions that are intended to detect fraud, protect SMEs, and strengthen the industry’s defences against financial crime, such as authorised push payment (APP) fraud.

The coalition will bring together representatives from tech providers, trade associations, major retail and challenger banks, fintech firms, digital identity solution providers and credit agencies, who will take part in data-driven research and testing on solutions to verify the legitimacy and identity of businesses interfacing with financial services, and on the security challenges in commerce and payments that UK consumers and businesses face.

The Fighting Economic Crime Through Enhanced Verification coalition will aim to demonstrate how tackling prevalent financial crime prevents businesses and their customers from being defrauded.

CFIT chief executive officer Ezechi Britton

CFIT confirmed that the core use cases for its second coalition are in development, with the final cohort of partners due to be announced over the summer.

It intends to publish interim findings in the fourth quarter of 2024, and a final report in early 2025.

Last month, UK Finance reported that criminals stole £1.17 billion through fraud last year, down 4% on 2022, while confirmed cases were 1% lower, at 2.97 million.

APP fraud losses amounted to £459.7 million – a 5% decline on 2022.

CFIT’s chief executive officer Ezechi Britton said: “Economic crime is a major threat to the UK’s financial security, and it can have a profoundly distressing impact on consumers and businesses.

“At CFIT, we are committed to addressing this and making the financial services industry more robust by uniting the best minds across the sector and beyond to combat this pressing issue. This will be achieved through verifying UK businesses to fight economic crime.”

He added: “Our intention is to support the incoming government and industry to put in place measures that will make financial services safer, and our economy even more resilient in the years to come.”

Chris Hayward, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation, cited its Vision for Economic Growth report published last year, in which one of the key recommendations was to accelerate digital verification solutions.

“Digital verification has the potential to help protect businesses and consumers and deliver a £4.8 billion boost to the UK economy from 2024 to 2030,” Hayward added.

“As one of CFIT’s co-founders, the City Corporation supports CFIT’s mission and looks forward to working with them on this important initiative.”